I must say that I am tired of talking heads on television and even some rather ignorant bloggers who suddenly decide that they are apologists for the system, telling me how much they abhor violence and condemning the so-called 'thugs' and black-bloc, etc etc. Here's a little secret - THEY DON'T ABHOR VIOLENCE, THEY ACTIVELY SUPPORT IT. The G20 is by its very nature, violence. The elites of Capitalist nations have been getting together for years to pursue unified trade policies, market policies, environmental policies, food policies, etc, the aim of which has been to enrich the Western nations, largely at the cost of less-developed nations. That is violence; violence, the cost of which is beyond description. Of course they pay lip-service to various development and humanitarian issues, but unless you've been living under a rock you know that this has very little to do with improving the living conditions in the poorer nations. For one thing most of the promised money never materializes, and for another much of the money is always meant to further enrich Western providers of goods and services. If you know anything about the subject of (so-called) international development, you know that aid money is targeted to help Western Corporations in various ways, and when you talk to the people in a more intimate setting who have been involved for a long time in the requisition and movement of such aid, they readily admit this simple fact. And when economic and aid policies cannot achieve their aims, the Western nations pursue their aims with armed conflict in which hundreds of thousands of people die. The G20 is systemic and institutionalized violence on a grand and historic scale. And to defend their systemic violence they put thousands of police on the street in riot gear brandishing clubs and teargas to extend their violence into the streets of their own nations. They don't hate violence, they love it because it feeds their machismo and affirms to them that they are men of power and substance, and they are happy to use violence to pursue their aims. And yet while they do unspeakable violence to the planet, to the poor in the third world, giving subsidies to big oil and weapons producers, they have the unmitigated gall to condemn a handful of young people who break some windows. Don't tell me they hate violence; violence is their modus operandi, it is the heart of their system and the expression of everything they are.
1 comment:
Exactly. Where is the outrage over the violence of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions? The ongoing killings of protesters of Canadian Mining corporations in Central and South America? Such dispossession of people and countries with trade agreements made with metaphorical guns to heads, that we have a flourishing human trafficking industry?
I've had it.
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